Chocolate
by BalrogsBreath
Summary: X-Men: First Class - It was too easy to forget he had been through the war. No, that was too kind. He'd been destroyed by it. The chocolate made them all remember.  They never should have forgotten.  Or, Erik has a PTSD response to chocolate.


Notes-

This comes from the following prompt: "Yet another PTSD-trigger-idea. Erik can usually handle things that remind him of the camp - Nazi symbols, barbed wire, seeing Shaw, medical instruments, but there is a trigger he can't get rid of by being tough or persuading himself he can handle this, because it is an illogical fear. Remember the scene at the beginning when he's offered chocolate by Schmidt? Naturally, he can't freak out every time he sees chocolate. Maybe the taste makes him sick. Maybe he has a panic attack when someone offers him chocolate. Some Erik/Charles and comfort."

Unbetaed, so any crit. would be welcome.

Enjoy.

**CHOCOLATE**

by Orockthro/BalrogsBreath

The Mansion (capitol M) was unlike anywhere Moira had ever lived, and she had lived in a number of interesting places. But Charles' place, half still covered in white dust sheets and with broken lightbulbs was somehow alive. Sean breaking glass every hour and Angel laughing at him, Raven screaming at Alex to leave the TV channels alone, and Hank awkwardly entering rooms and then leaving them with words stuck on the tip of his tongue. And, of course, Erik and Charles. Charles fell back into his old home with easy patterning. He was the one who went down to the store and bought five dozen eggs and began the slow process of making the abandoned Mansion a home for a slew of teenagers. Erik, well, Moira wasn't sure where Erik fell into the plan. He wasn't one of the kids, but he wasn't like Charles either. He wasn't ready to be anything but a soldier.

And Moira learned why the hard way. She saw the tattoo when Charles had pulled him out of the water, dark against his pale skin when the sopping shirt slipped off in leu of a dry one provided by the Coast Guard. He'd turned and quirked an eyebrow and buttoned his cuffs. Moira had just nodded and left the room. But it didn't escape her notice that he had worn turtlenecks for days afterwards. She hadn't slept well that night, sitting up in her bed and thinking. She did some mental math and comes up with a young number that made her shiver. Had he escaped? Been liberated? She felt Charles poke carefully at her consciousness and quells her questions. She didn't mind the intrusion, but it was a quick diversion from her train of thought. She smiled: Charles couldn't bear keep his mind to himself.

But now time had passed. Erik had become part of the Mansion life (much to the chagrin of the younger mutants who still cleared the room whenever Erik entered). He'd laughed and smiled and even shed tears (though she was sure Erik would have been mortified to learn had seen him swiping at his eyes after training with Charles) and done all the human things she'd come to expect from (her) mutants. It was too easy to forget he had been through the war. No, that was too kind. He'd been destroyed by it.

The chocolate made them all remember. (They never should have forgotten.)

She bought treats for the kids. They had been working hard lately, and if Charles' prediction was right (and she trusted him and his mind-gotten knowledge with her life) the days to come would be hard and violent. And the kids were still kids; she felt the need to take care of them, if only for another few days. By the time she got back from the store she had treats for everyone, Charles and Erik included. Cookies for Raven and Angel, candy for Alex and Sean, and a bar of chocolate each for Hank, Erik, Charles, and herself. Erik was running, Charles said, so Moira left his (a dark german brand she thought he would enjoy) on the desk in his room for him.

She and Charles sat down to tea and Moira didn't think twice about the chocolate until Charles froze, his tea cup halfway to his lips. His face paled and he slammed the tea cup down onto its saucer. Hot tea splashed out onto his knee but he paid it no mind. He pressed two fingers to his temple like he had on that first night Moira met him and hissed, "Erik…"

"Charles? What's wrong?" Possibilities flooded her mind: Shaw and teams of mutants swarming the Mansion and filling its halls like bugs, the government changing its mind in its fickle way and groups of g-men and machine guns pointed at the kids. Or Erik, she amended, if Charles' pained word was anything to go by.

Charles stumbled to his feet and dashed towards the back staircase. The staircase nearest to Erik's room. Moira chased after him without thinking, drawing her side arm into her hand with practiced ease. Charles might be a mutant who could freeze people in place with a thought but her CIA training was thorough and she knew better than to go into an unknown situation without a weapon.

The door to Erik's room, on the second floor and easternmost of the bedrooms, was half open. Charles beat her up the stairs and slammed himself through the mahogany door, ignoring Moira's directed thoughts to _wait for me to clear the room, Charles, _and, _for god's sake, don't just rush in there!_ But Charles, who undoubtably received her mental messages, ignored them.

"Erik," Charles whispered. Moira crossed the threshold with her gun extended. She whipped back and forth, but Erik, standing stock still in front of the desk, was alone. Moira tipped the gun down and flipped the safety catch back on but kept it in her hands. Erik stood ramrod straight in front of the desk. His hands were clenched and white-knuckled, and even from where she stood Moira could tell his breathing was too fast and too shallow. Hyperventilating.

Charles reached out and put a hand on the taller mutant's shoulder. "My friend," he started to say, but before he could finish whatever calming words he meant to utter Erik whipped out a clenched fist and knocked Charles to the ground. Erik was a powerful man and Charles dropped to the floor like a sack of flour. He whipped around so he was kneeling nearly on top of Charles, his left arm pressed up to Charles' throat and his right snatching the gun from Moira and turning it back on her.

"Where is he?" Erik rasped. His voice sounded wrong, like someone had sucked all the moisture out of his mouth.

"What? Erik you need to let Charles go. Now." Moira used the CIA voice she developed to talk down fat, overconfident mafia bosses. Not a friend's voice, not a woman's voice, just the voice of someone who meant business. She ignored the gun pointing at her. Charles wasn't struggling but, to her relief, it wasn't because he was unconscious. Erik hadn't slipped completely out of control and was restraining himself from killing his friends.

But just because he hadn't yet killed one of them didn't mean he wouldn't. The gun jangled and reasserted itself in her mind as a thread. "Shaw!" Erik shouted. "Where? When?" And then, "stay out of my head, for god's sake, Charles!" and Erik thrust more of his weight forward. Charles' eyes began to roll and flutter and his hands flopped against the plush carpet.

"Jesus, Erik! Let him go!" The CIA voice cracked. "Shaw's not here! Charles would have noticed!" Moria watched as he thought about this and backed off Charles. The younger mutant gasped and gulped in huge lungfuls of air.

"Moria's right. Shaw isn't here, my friend. Calm yourself and try and think rationally." Charles' voice was hoarse from his near strangulation. Moria tried not to hate Erik for it, but it's difficult. The gun dropped to the floor and she scooped it up.

"What the hell were you thinking?" she shouted at him. She didn't care that he was pale and shaking. Good, she thought, he should be sick with himself after what he just did. He dropped off Charles completely and slumped against the side of the bed.

"The chocolate. The," he began to hyperventilate again.

Charles slowly crawled to his hands and knees and dragged himself to sit in front of Erik. Moira wanted to pull him away but Charles' quiet, _no, Moira. He needs us right now,_ kept her from grabbing him by the collar and shoving him safely away. Charles was unsurprisingly gentle when he slowly (and always with both his hands visible) moved Erik's head down toward his knees when he looked ready to tip over.

"I thought," Erik mumbled, his voice obscured by his knees and the harsh sound of his own breathing, "he was back." And after a long pause, "I'm sorry."

"There is nothing to forgive, my friend," Charles said. Moira was not quite so forgiving and she was happy (not for the first time) that it was Charles who was the telepath and not Erik.

Later, when Erik was calmed and told to take a long bath and a nap (the fact that he agreed suggested that Charles was more mentally intrusive than he had let Moira or Erik believe) they sit back down to their cold tea. The children were still elsewhere and Moira felt ten years older than she had an hour before.

"Care to fill me in?"

Charles sat back. He looked older too, she thought. "I don't want to share more than is my right, but in this case I feel it is pertinent." Moira tried not to think too loudly that as their CIA liaison just about everything was pertinent to her. Charles forgot sometimes that she was technically in charge. His quirked eyebrow probably meant she hadn't thought that as quietly as she meant to. "You know that Shaw had Erik during the war?" Moira hadn't known, not empirically. She had guessed and assumed and wondered, but Charles' words still sent a shudder down her back. "I won't divulge beyond my due, but it was… bad." He shifted his legs uncomfortably in his chair. "Quite bad. But more specifically, Shaw used to starve him, quite nearly to death, and then eat that brand of chocolate in front of him until he could move metal objects on command."

Moira felt sick.

"They killed his whole family, Moira. _Shaw_ killed his whole family. I can't," Charles slipped his head forward until his forehead fell into his palm. His hair, fashionable and long, drooped over his fingers. "I can't imagine what that would do to a man."

Moira can. Moira carefully doesn't think that any man shaped by Shaw can only become as destructive. She knew Charles thought it too. Charles who thought he could change the world thought he could change Erik as well. She hoped he was right.


End file.
